Hamlet through feminist lens

GHey, everybody and welcome to Mohcast, a podcast where I heavily scrutinize the social issues of 15th century writing! I’m your host Mohamad, and today I’m going to be analyzing a very popular play you’ve most definitely heard of before… William Shakespear’s Hamlet! For today’s lens, I will be using a feminist lens to analyze how gender roles are represented in the play.

Alright, For those who may not know who William Shakespeare was, he was a 14th Century English playwriter, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language, and the play “Hamlet’' is considered one of the greatest and widely known plays in history. Hamlet is so popular worldwide in fact that it is estimated to be performed at least once every hour, which is absolutely nuts if you ask me.

When I first heard about Hamlet, I was in seventh grade. Ever since then, I have been completely obsessed with the play because of their manner of speaking and how different English culture was compared to the one we know today. The reason why I chose the feminist lens was when I first saw the film, the way each gender was expressed, especially when it comes to portraying some of the main characters really stood out to me.

The first character that stood out to me is none other than the big man himself, Hamlet. Hamlet is not only the protagonist, but a misogynist throughout the play too, who always gets away with heavily sexist comments toward female characters because of his status as a prince.

Listen to this scene from the play and it might help you further understand some of Hamlet’s misogynistic words. Act 3, Scene 1, Line 136. In this scene, Hamlet refers to Ophelia as a person who will decrease the value of men and also refers to her as a horrible woman and some kind of witch who can turn men into monsters. These comments toward Ophelia were very sexist comments and rude for Hamlet to say to any woman, But he always gets away with his misogyny because he is the prince, and he also said some of those same comments to his own mother, a person you should never say to. In one the scene from Act 2, Hamlet criticizes his mother for marrying his uncle, calling her weak. Calling women weak is something Hamlet does a lot throughout the story. A prime example is from Act 1, Scene 2, Line 150

In that line Hamlet uses the word “frailty” which is a fancy word for weak. While reading Hamlet, I couldn’t help but think of someone else who I believe to be a misogynist - Andrew Tate. Tate is a former kickboxer and social media influencer known for flaunting his wealth and sharing outdated and offensive “alpha male” advice, often at the expense of women. Both Hamlet and Tate abuse their power to mistreat and misrepresent women."



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In Tate’s case, he faces a lot of backlash; he’s even been banned from quite a handful of social platforms but Hamlet got away with his action because at the time, men were seen as the superior being and women were not considered half what a man could possibly be.

The second character I want to talk about is Ophelia, Ophelia’s role in the play revolves around her relationships with the three male characters: her father Polonius, her brother Laertes, and potential suitor Hamlet. Ophelia’s relationship with these characters is the reason why they all suffer tragic fates. In Act One, Scene Three, Audience sees Laertes and Polonius tell ophila what to do without letting her choose her own decision. In the act where the audience were first introduced to Ophelia, Laertes and Polonius criticize Ophelia for trusting Hamlet’s expressions of love. Let me play some part of the scene where Laertes is talking to Ophelia

Later on, the audience saw Polonius tighten the reins on Loretta. At the start of Act Three, Polonius forces Ophelia to return Hamlet’s letters and renounce his affection. Ophelia obeys, but her action sends Hamlet into a blind rage. Soon after, Hamlet mistakenly kills Polonius. The combination of Hamlet’s rage and her father’s death causes Ophelia to spiral into grief. In Act Four, Scene 7, she succumbs to intense rage and dies of drowning.

All of these people, meaning Ophelia’s brother and father, see her as a tool for their own benefit. Ophelia is presented by Shakespeare as a low-class individual with a lack of freedom; her name is a literal translation of “Aid woman” according to verywellfamily. This further shows how disrespected she is compared to the other male and female characters in Hamlet as well as other Shakespearean female characters in other plays such Romeo and Juliet.

These two characters really stood out to me when I watched the play through a feminist lens, there was so much inequality between the characters throughout the entire play, there are only two female characters in the play: the queen and Ophelia. The play is almost four hours long they are both underrepresented in this story; the same goes for the other Shakespeare plays; some of his female characters were even played by men which showed disrespect to females in the Elizabethan era

If you haven’t read the play or watched the movie, I highly recommend that you do so in your spare time.

Ok… Alright, that wraps up today’s podcast. I hope you guys learned something new today and as always, I will see you in the next episode. Thank you for listening

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